Re:Can a Supernova Cause Mass Extinction?
by jrue on Saturday January 05, 2019 @05:00PM
(#18834549)
All the ways extinction is possible helps to answer Fermi’s paradox. Asteroids, nuclear war, disease, supernova, etc. I was just reading that NASA is getting closer to its [asteroid defense system](https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart). It’s like civilizations are in a race to get technologically advanced enough to protect against all the ways they can be extinguished. I imagine we would one day catalog all of the potential supernovas near us to a high degree of certainty. Hopefully, if we found an imminent one, we would be advanced enough to take mitigating steps or just leave the planet.
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Re:Can a Supernova Cause Mass Extinction?
by mr_toad on Saturday January 05, 2019 @09:08PM
(#18835913)
Only if the mass extinctions happen fast/regularly enough.
We don’t really know how long it takes for intelligence to evolve, or how long a interstellar civilisation to develop, since we only have one example of the former and zero of the latter.
Re:Can a Supernova Cause Mass Extinction?
by erik_landerholm on Saturday January 05, 2019 @08:23PM
(#18835679)
Also volcanos and huge solar storms. I think they are underestimated, at least on earth for causing local and mass exinctions. We don’t really have any defense for most of these and nothing on the horizon. :shrug